Since the 2018/2019 school year, Istat has been collaborating with the civic monitoring project At the School of OpenCohesion (Asoc), aimed at upper secondary school students. The collaboration follows the agreement between Istat and the Cohesion Policy Department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which as one of its objectives has “to foster the dissemination of statistical literacy, to provide an adequate in-depth study of research methodologies and the construction of synthetic indicators and to enrich students’ training during their educational path”.
ASOC is an innovative didactic programme aimed at promoting and developing in Italian schools principles of active and aware citizenship, through research and civic monitoring activities of the European and national public fundings. It started on an experimental basis in the 2013/2014 school year with seven schools, and in the 2019/2020 school year it came to involve 204 schools, about 500 teachers and 5,000 students. The programme is recognised as a Pathway for Transversal Skills and Orientation (“Percorso per le competenze trasversali e per l’orientamento“ – PCTO) and provides training credits to teachers who follow some modules, including the Statistical Literacy+ module.
In the 2019-2020 school year, the European experimentation started in Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Portugal and Spain, to these is added the brand new ASOC Slovenia course, and in the 2021/2022 school year the experimentation within Italy-Croatia, Italy-France Maritime, Italy-Austria cross-border cooperation.
2023/2024 school year
The collaboration with ASOC continues for the 2023/2024 school year. The agreement includes a dual training channel: on the one hand, support for schools through the intervention of territorial experts, and on the other, teacher training through the Statistical Literacy+ program, carried out by Istat thematic experts and recognized by the Ministry of Education. The training consists of four lessons that can be accessed as online webinars, with the related supporting slides and any further insights. Here are all the details and the dedicated Vademecum.
Lesson 1 – Istat databases and information systems
See slides of lesson 1: Part 1 (Giuseppina Sola) – Part 2 (Carlo Boselli) (in Italian only)
At the close of the selection of lower and upper secondary schools that applied for the current edition of the At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC) project, which provides for the possibility of joining one of the three addresses, a total of 145 teams (classes or groups of classes) were admitted; of these, 22 percent were schools in the Center-Northern Italy and 78 percent in the South, corresponding to 115 educational institutions.
2022/2023 school year
During the 2022/2023 school year, the collaboration with ASOC continued. The agreement includes a dual training channel, on the one hand, support for schools through the intervention of territorial experts, and on the other, teacher training through the Statistical Literacy+ program, carried out by Istat thematic experts and recognized by the Ministry of Education.
The Statistical Literacy+ 2022-2023 course, consisting of four lessons, can be accessed as a webinar, with related supporting slides and any further insights:
Lesson 1 – Data at hand; statistical data visualization in IstatData (Cristiana Conti and Giovanna Coiro)
See slides of Lesson 1
Part 1: “Data at hand: disseminating concepts, vocabulary, numbers” (Cristiana Conti)
Part 2: “Data visualization in IstatData – the data warehouse of the Italian National Institute of Statistics” (Giovanna Coiro)
Lesson 2 – Territorial statistics for cohesion policies (Luigi De Iaco)
See slides of lesson 2
Lesson 3 – Communicating and visualizing with images statistical data (Patrizia Collesi)
See slides of lesson 3
See links for further insights
Lesson 4 – Knowing and preparing an official statistical survey (Rita Lima)
See slides of lesson 4
The project targeting lower secondary schools is fully operational: a simplified programme including data research and analysis, supported by Istat researchers.
2021/2022 school year
Also for the 2021/2022 school year, the activities foreseen by the protocol continue, in an all-digital mode. The collaboration continues and expands with a new agreement that formalizes, in addition to the support to schools by the territorial experts-2022, the teacher training activity Statistical Literacy+, carried out by Istat thematic experts and recognized as valid by the Ministry of Education.
The Statistical Literacy+ course consists of four lessons, available as webinars, with supporting slides:
Lesson 1 – Knowing and preparing an official statistical survey (Rita Lima)
See slides of lesson 1
Lesson 2 – Knowing environmental data (Giovanna Tagliacozzo)
Lesson 3 – Territorial statistics (Federico Benassi)
See slides of lesson 3
Lesson 4 – Finding and telling data, new forms of communication to tell data in a coherent framework (Michela Troia – Patrizia Collesi)
See slides of lesson 4
After the experimentation in 2020/2021, the project aimed at lower secondary schools is consolidated with eight institutes; it provides a simplified programme that includes data research and analysis, supported by Istat researchers.
2020/2021 school year
The collaboration continues with a new agreement that formalizes, in addition to the territorial support, the teacher training activity Statistical Literacy+, by Istat thematic experts, recognised as valid by the Ministry of Education.
The Statistical Literacy+ module consists of four lessons, available as webinars, with supporting slides:
Lesson 1 – Knowing and preparing an official statistical survey (Rita Lima)
See slides of lesson 1
Lesson 2 – Communicating and visualizing with pictures statistical data (Daria Squillante)
See slides of lesson 2
Here the exercises (Instructions) “Playing with visualisations” by Daria Squillante (Istat)
Lesson 3 – Communicating data and official statistical information with social networks (Giovanni Prattichizzo)
Lesson 4 – Organising an event for the presentation of statistical data (Federica Navarra e Paola Muccitelli)
See slides of lesson 4
See the direction of an online event
Istat took part in the committee evaluating the teams’ work and in the final award ceremony on 4 June 2021.
In the 2020-2021 school year, a pilot project was also started with two lower secondary schools, supported by Istat territorial researchers.
2019/2020 school year
For the current school year, the collaboration has expanded, and in addition to the work of the over 65 Istat experts in the territorial network, an advanced training course for teachers Statistical Literacy+ has been provided. The full module includes four lessons, with slides and webinars:
Lesson 1 – The sources of official statistics
- Part 1: The National Statistical System (Vincenzo Lo Moro); Part 2: Official statistics disseminated by Istat.it website (GianMarco Schiesaro); The sources of official statistics (Grazia Di Bella) [video | slides]
Lesson 2 – Forms and tools of data visualization
- Part 1: Storyshowing: the pop beauty of statistics (Daria Squillante); Part 2: Data visualization e web publishing (Michele Ferrara) [video | slides | slides| exercises | instructions]
Lesson 3 – Territorial statistics
- Part 1: Territorial disaggregation of national statistics (Fabio Lipizzi); Part 2: Indicators for cohesion policies (Luigi De Iaco); Part 3: Territorial information systems (Marianna Mantuano) [video | slides]
Lesson 4 – Browsing and extracting data from I.stat
- Part 1: How to search for data and select a dataset in I.stat (Enrica Massi); Part 2: Customizing multidimensional tables (Giovanna Coiro); Part 3: The metadata component and data export. The new StatBase system (Concetta Pellegrini) [video | slides]
On June 10, 2020 Istat participated in the #ASOC1920 AWARDS event.
2018/2019 school year
Istat with the Territorial Network supported the teams participating in the Asoc project (brochure). The more than sixty Istat experts in the reference territories carried out preparatory activities to the learning of techniques for data analysis and open data, allowing young people to strengthen their civic monitoring activities. Through lectures, webinars and participation in Open Government Week events, researchers brought data and official statistics to the teams, contributing to the correct understanding and use of data.
Training activities included material on the process of collecting and producing official statistics data and a video talk on the construction of synthetic indices and indicators.
Step 4 – Understanding data: indices and indicators
- The collection of statistical data (Patrizia Grossi) [slides] Understanding data: Indices and indicators (Matteo Mazziotta) [video | slides]
Two teams supported by Istat reached the podium. In first place was the Restart team of the ITT Mario Ciliberto of Crotone, with the project: “Recovery and enhancement of the ancient archaeological area of Kroton – remediation pilot project”, supported by the territorial office of Calabria. In third place, supported by the Molise office, was the Tangenzialete 007 team from the Liceo Giuseppe Maria Galanti in Campobasso.